Four Replies for Joshua - IV

Library, NIAS, Bangalore

Sailen Routray

Survey Map of Bangalore from 1800 AD
Image Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Like Krishna covering the sun with his discus,

poetry is essentially an act of transparent deception.

 
One scrubs at the edges of words till they shine,
so that they can cover the webbed angularity of the world.

What else can one do?

Eat beans on toast at Koshy’s on a dry August afternoon?
Practice walking with an Odissi sway for an imaginary customer?
Repeat ‘the map is not the territory’ one hundred and eight times?

As a cross dressing Odia poet said in the fifteenth century of our lord –
pakkhié jāra mānachitra – the birds are his map.

Note: This poem was first published in the webzine 'Muse India' as part of a larger poetic conversation with Bangalore based writer and poet Joshua Muyiwa.